In February 2022, a twenty-one-year-old Ojibwe and Métis woman named Christine Paquette was job-hunting online. She clicked on a posting for an entry-level position in customer service at CIBC. The call for applications, which was targeted to self-identified Indigenous candidates, seemed typical at first. But then came strange questions: “Do you have a favourite Indigenous story and/or tradition?” The posting also invited applicants to submit a video cover letter and suggested they “dress in traditional regalia or bring in back-up dancers!”
Paquette was baffled. Her mother’s family is from Pinaymootang First Nation in Treaty 2 Territory, a few hours’ drive north of Winnipeg, where she lives. Like many Indigenous people, she hadn’t been raised with tradition, a result of colonialism. Her grandmother had attended a federal day school as a child, where she was taught that her culture was shameful. Paquette thought the questions insensitive. More than that, they were weird. “Dressing in traditional regalia is not a tool to get a job,” she tweeted at CIBC. The bank defended itself, tweeting back that the questions had been designed by an organization called Our Children’s Medicine, “in consultation with Indigenous community leaders and Elders.”
